190
PARTISAN REVIEW
by the window, her back turned. The old man, his face alone
appearing between the cone of bandages and the sheet, seemed
already dead. There were two stripes of blood running from his
temple to his beard. Felipe hustled us out when one of the doctors
showed up which meant, I suppose, that he had not asked permis·
sion. He stayed in the room. 'The General seems terribly con·
cerned,' said Roberto. 'Is there anything in the story that he
wanted to sell the old man extra protection after that machine gun
episode last winter and that the old man told him off?' He's a
shrewd egg, that Roberto. I said, 'There are stories and stories',
and that put an end to it. I don't know myself if it's true. It
could be."
" I suppose so," said Paco.
"Anyhow, since it was going to be a long night I went down
with Roberto for a couple of Daiquiris and made a few phone calls
and bought the papers, and there already was the whole business
with
el /efe's
pictures right in the middle as though it had all taken
place for his sake. They had him in eight or ten poses sharing space
with the old man in his commissar's coat, and there he stood point·
ing to the overturned table and holding the piolet with a handker·
chief. 'I suppose this makes him a sure thing with the party in
Jalisco. Will they make him a senator?' asked Roberto. 'A gover·
nor if they're hard up.'
"We went back and sat around with the others.
El /efe
never
left the room for long. He took to admitting reporters two and
three at a time so that there was always somebody in there. And I
kept taking calls in to him and had a good chance to watch him
and, I say, for the limited man he is he had an exceptionally good
understanding of the situation and behaved with marvelous
decoro.
Only he could feel no more than his own part of it. He knew noth·
ing at all about the rest, the two old people and the murderer and
what it meant to have an enemy at the other side of the world
at whom you could never strike back. He is that way.
For
instance, take what he said before about the church. A man
of
culture when he is connected with a revolutionary government,
Paco, can at least admire a church artistically. So with this great
instinct of his he chooses just about the right thing to say withoul
understanding the slightest bit. He arrives with the
touch.
That's
the way he lives.
